This article was originally written for the Japanese market version of an internal Microsoft Automotive newsletter.  Since the content is industry generic and not confidential, I thought it was worth repeating here for a larger audience.  Enjoy!

Automakers today increasingly seek closer relationships with their customers.  This will improve information available on customer vehicle wants and needs, customer satisfaction and loyalty, early identification of field concerns, and more accurate and precise forecasting.  However this is typically not as straightforward as this may seem, because of the dealer model.  Dealers are mainly the ‘sharp end’ of an auto company’s contact with it’s customers, and do not necessarily pass information gathered reliably onto the automaker.  The reasons for this are complex and manifold, and certainly include an inclination to avoid disintermediation and ‘control’ the relationship with the customer.  That said, these cultural issues are compounded by systems and process issue that can be addressed.

As such, the automaker can enable multiple channels of communication and relationship development with the customer, and do a better job of ensuring that the most is made of the data that is collected.  Things to consider include:

·         Integrated CRM

·         Dealership channel

·         Callcenter / IVR system channel

·         Finance company channel

·         Survey channel

·         Automaker website channel

·         3^rd party website channel

·         Advertising company channel

·         Community channel

·         In-vehicle channel

·         Analysis services

Some of these are self explanatory, but the remainder of this article will drill further into several of these approaches.

An integrated approach to managing customer data is missing from most automotive scenarios today.  Dealer and automaker customer data is managed separately, and in many cases does not align.  Even if the dealer and the automaker agree that the dealer should not give the automaker full transparency (although some automakers are renegotiating that issue and including it in franchise agreements), some information has to be passed – at least when a prospect becomes a customer – and there is no reason why this information should not be 100% aligned.  A properly architected CRM implementation will allow for the disclosure of an agreed level of information to relevant parties in the value chain, and ensures that the customer has one and only one well defined core identity for all its dealings with the automaker.  Today, this doesn’t even work within the dealership.  New Car Sales, Used Car Sales, Parts Sales, Service, Financing, Car Rental (if it exists) will often have completely distinct records of a customer, and updating one doesn’t update the others, which means they inevitably diverge and fragment over time.  Worst, there is no transactional history, so that – for example – service problems with a customers current car are not known to new car sales when they are trying to sell the customer a replacement or additional car.  This does not inspire confidence or a sense of being looked after, nor does it allow the salesman to address the concerns of the customer without the customer being made explicitly aware that his concerns are being addressed.  An integrated approach to CRM within dealerships will become core to some of our partner DMS offerings, and can be retrofitted using Microsoft CRM assets where this is not the case.  For a franchise-wide approach to the topic, Microsoft CRM is more than capable of providing aligned CRM across the entire value chain, and can be obtained online as an alternative to on-premise implementations, and perhaps in some cases making it easier and more palatable to achieve a network-wide implementation for multiple value chain participants.

Once this is done, and again subject to OEM – Dealership agreements and training programs, customer contacts can be reliably captured and codified into the CRM system.  A well designed system will support a taxonomy that makes it easy to add required metadata to what might otherwise be relatively unstructured events, making it easy to build a complete portfolio on the customer, which can be recalled at a moment’s notice to enable subsequent contact and transactions to go smoothly, the targeting of the customer’s needs, and the mining of this information in the aggregate to capture overall trends of customer desires and concerns from the field.  The same principles can be applied to callcenter / interactive voice systems, and interactions with the captive or partner finance company/ies.

There’s not much need for us to discuss surveys here, other than to note that surveys must provide the means of reifying customer identity against the canonical scheme – this information should be prepopulated on the survey from the CRM system – but in fact there is a natural opportunity here to target surveys (where a truly random population is explicitly not required) according to what is known about the customers activity, interests, and concerns.

The next broad category of channels for obtaining customer information is internet / world wide web assets.  Automaker websites are evidently an important and prime source of customer information.  Ensuring that the customer is incented as early as possible to disclose their identity and being able to reify this against any other identity (CRM record) that the consumer may have is critical.  Incenting this behavior is relatively simple, so long as the process is not made onerous to the customer.  Giveaways, promotions, and offers are an easy means of ensuring that the consumer has a well defined identity with your company in the first instance.   Security of information entered and stored is another reason for a consumer to create an identity.   If the consumer is or becomes a customer, this is even more straightforward providing the processes exist to capture registration data ideally as part of the vehicle order process or handover, but if not then early on in the aftersales cycle.  Another way to make this easy is to support broadly used identity schemes such as a Microsoft Live ID (it’s also possible for the widest reach to support multiple schemes and largely abstract this from the customer by use of Infocard).  These schemes mean that customers don’t have to remember yet another username and password combination for the automaker or dealer, and can reuse information that they have already cached in their profile if they so desire, reducing onerous data entry.  Once you can identify the customer reliably, you can capture a lot of information from the website, not just in terms of things that the customer requests or orders, but also in terms of what they looked at.  This can build a profile on the customers interests and opportunities that might relate to current promotions and business drives.

‘My vehicle’ portals are beginning to appear as a staple part of the industry, and are likely to grow and become more sophisticated over time.  Not only does this provide the natural home for order upsell before delivery, customer loyalty building programs throughout the lifecycle, and the ability to interact with the vehicle without being in it (particularly as ‘Car IT’ increases penetration), but this can also be a natural place to query the customer about

3^rd party websites can also be federated and be a useful source of information depending on partnerships and commercial agreements.  Again, the use of mechanisms like Live ID makes this easier.  Such sites include multi-vehicle sites (such as MSN Autos), finance company sites, and other affiliates, which might include rental car companies, insurance agencies/companies, car repair and valeting services.

Advertising company information is perhaps a little controversial.  We all know that internet advertising companies seek track and trace individuals activity on the world wide web and provide as much information to advertisers and their clients, both in order to target advertising to appropriate individuals, and also to sell customer information as a source of revenue, but it has to be recognized that much of this is done without the customers consent, and this is quite controversial and subject to considerable exposure and resistance from privacy lobbyists in some regions.  Local culture should be taken into account before exploiting this as a source of information on your customers.  If you can reify what may be relatively anonymous implicit consumer identities with a well defined identity as defined above, considerable value can be added to and by this information flow.  Working with these advertising companies to direct consumers to your website so this link can be made explicit is one method of doing this that at least can solicit some form of consent from the consumer, other methods that involve anything from persistent cookies to adware should probably be avoided.  That said, if an ethically acceptable way can be found to exploit this information, it can considerably enrich the information available about the consumer, their general interests and desires (which can be used with demographic analysis to target customers to particular vehicle lines and features), and more importantly their automotive interests and desires.

The community channel is still relatively nascent in Automotive, but is a hugely important channel in other sectors.  For many consumer products, much of the support – and arguably the best support – available is via community forums that share information on how to overcome common problems and company performance.  These forums can make a very positive contribution to customer satisfaction at little or no cost to the automaker or dealer, provide honest feedback on how you are really doing, and are an excellent source of information on customer needs and wants that can be fed right into your next product development cycle.  Concerns can also be identified via this path, together with quality contextual information from the customer that can be very helpful in making a diagnosis of root cause, especially across several incidents from different consumers.  But the method isn’t ‘read-only’ – you can also engage with the customers via the forum to solicit further information, provide a company point of view and explanation, and even provide assistance and ensure that customers do not slip ‘through the net’.  To do this, a moderated forum run by the company is probably the best way to go, but in that instance moderation must not be heavy-handed or appear like censorship, as this will deter customers from participating freely.  It may also be possible to participate in 3^rd party run forums, but in that instance it should be viewed as mandatory to disclose that your representatives act for the company, and it needs to be verified that this is consistent with forum policy.  Acting as a company advocate without disclosure should be strictly discouraged. 

In addition to support and discussion forums, many owners clubs – independent, company supported, and company operated – have existed for many years, and most of these have a life – if not a new lease of life – on the web.  These can be created where they do not exist or have become moribund.  A strong brand identity, usually at a model or vehicle line level, is likely to be most successful in attracting the kind of loyalty, interest, and participation needed.  These forums – as well as the support and discussion forums – are great places to solicit input and feedback, from feature ranking through to even specifying a special edition of the relevant vehicle to be sold either exclusively or mostly to forum members, at least initially.  If successfully done, the strong positive feedback mechanisms are almost untouchable by other techniques.  Inviting club participants to events or special clinics is another way to build loyalty and encourage honest feedback.

The final channel in our analysis here has barely been used to date, but is likely to become one of the most powerful.  As vehicles become more connected to services outside the car, the opportunity to significantly increase customer information is materially strengthened.  For starters, most services are going to require that both the vehicle and the current users (mostly the driver) are well identified.  This overcomes some of the concerns noted above.  The potential exists to capture a lot of information from the vehicle-user combination.  The services used by the vehicle operator can clearly be tracked and used to build a more complete profile of the customer’s vehicle activity.  Remote diagnostics and real-time traffic probe information can be captured and mined not only to fix faults and provide improved navigation, but also to build more information on what and how customers do with their cars.  Ultimately, a complete profile of how a car is used and in what conditions by what drivers can be captured and uploaded to an analytical service in the cloud.  How much of this can or should be done will vary by market, by current state of market acceptance, and by user, probably via explicit user agreement.  However it is worth noting that many consumers are willing to give up some privacy to get something material back in return, whether this be free services / connectivity, the need to support advertising-funded models, or some other form of reward. 

In addition, the opportunity to make it easy to capture feedback directly from the customer should not be discounted.  Providing an immediate ‘feedback button’ should be considered in all vehicles with an infotainment system that supports hands free.  This is likely to be voice activated for driver safety considerations, although could accept text input when the vehicle is stationary, subject to the provision of an appropriate data entry method / device.  The system should be designed to reliably capture metadata about the topic, as well as the actual statement itself.  The handling of the voice call / statement can be either via a call center, or automated voice systems, or both.  If automated, some degree of analysis / preparsing to ensure intelligibility before filing may be desirable.  This can also be linked to follow-up activity via email or web portal to give the customer the chance to extend his feedback via text and other means.  Being able to capture problems at source and at times of occurrence will guarantee the most feedback, and the most precise feedback.  Additionally, the feedback can be linked to a dump of information from vehicle ECUs at the time of the problem by category, providing for the first time a better way of handling intermittent faults, which cause a lot of frustration, customer dissatisfaction, and warranty cost in the automotive ecosystem.

Finally, as interactive dialog-based voice interfaces mature, it is possible – within rational constraint – to query the customer about certain experiences, features, or concerns he or she may have expressed while the vehicle is in motion.  This might particularly be useful as new features are added, or about to be added.  It is entirely feasible to conceive of certain consumers volunteering to be beta testers for new features, and being asked for feedback on an occasional basis post-use on how well the feature is working out.  This low-intrusion solicited feedback technique provides a new dimension in obtaining proximity to your customer, and ensuring that your products meet or beat their needs.

Once an automaker and their partners have solicited these huge banks of information, what to do with it?  We’ve provided some examples above, but it goes without saying that a first class data capture, lifecycle management, customer profile extraction, reporting, and data mining engine is critical to be successful in translating information into insight and customer intimacy.  SQL Server 2008 is perfect for this purpose, and some aspects of this capability might ultimately be implemented as cloud services using Microsoft .NET Services.  To take optimum advantage from this data, different roles within an Automaker along with Dealers, Suppliers, Finance companies, and other partners will also require access to certain aspects of this information, but customer privacy and competitive confidentiality considerations dictate that not all roles / participants will have access to all information – and to simplify these roles, an appropriate role-based view of pertinent information is more useful anyway.  These capabilities are relatively easy to implement using .NET and to extend through secure collaboration using Microsoft DRM, and these capabilities will also be implemented on the Azure Services Platform in the future, making it easier to exploit network effects across the value chain.  The customer-related information discussed here can be combined with other sources of information (engineering data, manufacturing build history, warranty and concern information, even weather, traffic, insurance etc…) to provide the most complete possible view on incidents, concerns, customer experience, or the individual or class of vehicle in question, providing the most comprehensive information system to drive better decision making, engineering, manufacturing, service, and customer engagement for an automaker and its partners.